BRADENTON GECKO FEST 2010

One of my gecko designs, "Stars and Stripes Gecko Jack," was chosen for auction by the Bradenton Gecko Fest 2010. Then, while hanging on display on the exterior wall of the Merrill Lynch Building at the Northwest corner of 10th Street and Manatee Avenue in downtown Bradenton, the 6-foot painted gecko sold for $1,000 USD

WQ MAGAZINE First Place Winner

In 2009, my painting, "Leper Beauty," won First Place in the WQ|mag Fall Art Contest. This is a piece I created in 1999 while involved in a volunteer hands-on healing program at the Leper Community in Tabanan, Bali, Indonesia, Although the left-hand side of the 23-year old subject had been ravaged by leprosy since birth, her right-hand side remained unaffected. The painting captures the remarkable subtlety of beauty on her unmarred, right side.

Within 3 months following the completion of the painting and a series of hands-on healing sessions, the girl experienced a total reversal of her condition. The flesh she had lost from leprosy left scars -- much the way a person who has suffered acute acne has scars -- and part of her left ear remained missing. But she no longer suffered the stench nor the festering boils that accompany the disease. Research indicates that Caucasians possess a certain body chemical that may affect and alter specific forms of leprosy. Chances are this chemical in my body somehow contributed to the girl's miraculous healing.

Dr. Zae Zatoon, Ph.D., a transpersonal therapist and doctor in Natural Healing, offers another opinion. "Putting attention on that degree of attractiveness," Zatoon suggests, "The painting may have allowed the girl to glimpse her own beauty for, perhaps, the first time in her life. On the psychological level that links body, mind and heart, this viewpoint of a fresh self-perception may well have aided the girl's ability to muster the courage and confidence to live and to heal."